Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Monterey Bay White Shark Research - Nine Years

The premier white shark husbandry and tagging project for juvenile animals is celebrating nine years of cutting edge work in Monterey.

This week Sea Notes posted a summary worth reading:

This summer is the ninth year of our White Shark Project. Through this work we have been able to display five juvenile great whites in our Outer Bay exhibit and have tagged and tracked these sharks, and nearly 40 others in the field, to learn more about the movements of these young animals along the coast.


This year, with the Outer Bay exhibit about to undergo a transformation, we won’t try to bring a shark to Monterey; but the field work continues.



From our previous research results we’ve seen that some young white sharks tagged in the southern California region move to, or return to, warmer winter waters off Baja California. We’d like to know if they return to California and regularly make this south-north migration, but the size of the young sharks limits the tag we can use, and thus how much information we can gather.



Complete Post.

Smart Conservation - Shark People Take Note

How do you get 500K (and counting) people to change perceptions on a Plastic Bag Initiative?

When you're smart, like the folks over at Heal the Bay, you produce something like this highly entertaining Mockumentary. You want to be watching for the "vast cement rivers," segment and the "home to" quote, classic.

Folks on the front lines of shark conservation should take note. For the past four years shark PSA's have focused on the blood and gore of shark fining but it is time for a fresh look at this and another take.

Blood and gore is a one trick pony and we could be mining an audience outside the traditional shark conservation crowd, a broader reach with a viral video like this is always a good thing.

Kudos to the Heal the Bay folks and yes, we signed the petition: